Battle of Island Number Ten

The Battle of Island Number Ten was an American Civil War battle which was fought from 28 February to 8 April 1862 at New Madrid, Missouri.

The Confederate States Army had occupied a fort on Island Number Ten, an island on the Mississippi River near New Madrid, Missouri, at the start of the war, as it controlled access to the rest of the river to the south. In March 1862, after the Confederates abandoned Columbus, Kentucky ahead of Union general John Pope's Army of the Mississippi, Pope occupied the town of Point Pleasant, Missouri directly west of the island. The Union army's siege guns bombarded the town of New Madrid, forcing the Confederate general John P. McCown to evacuate the town and abandon most of his heavy artillery and supplies as his forces withdrew to Island Number Ten. Two days later, a flotilla of US Navy gunboats and mortar rafts under Andrew Hull Foote sailed downstream to attack the island. The Union forces at New Madrid began to dig a canal east of the town to bypass the island, and the army then crossed the river and attacked the fort from the Tennessee side. Pope cut off the Confederate retreat route, and the Confederates, having lost only 30 killed or wounded, were forced to surrender their entire army. The Mississippi River was now open to the Union as far as Fort Pillow at Memphis, and New Orleans' fall three weeks later threatened to cut the Confederacy in half along the river.